Tuscany

Our tickets are booked, I have a planning calendar and have checked off quite a few things on the list of things to do.   I've packed my suitcase, organized, planned and Googled maps countless times.  I've started attaching sticky notes to the top of my bookcase at eye level.  I picked up my 3 week coffee table book at the library yesterday...."In Tuscany" by Frances Mayes.
My daughter studied for a semester in Tuscany and ever since has wanted me to visit her special hilltown.  We decided that the time is "now" so we will be spending 2 weeks in Rome and another 2 weeks in Cortona.
 
I'm looking so forward to being in the town that found a place in my daughter's heart.  I would call her at the student hostel and I could hear her footsteps coming down the long stone staircase to answer the phone.  She has friends there and a favorite restaurant she says we'll eat in often.  She wants to take me to the olive grove where she and her friends picked olives and to the little store that sells the best sandwiches in the world.  We will be taking day trips down the mountain to places like Arrezo and Assisi and hiking to get to the special places around Cortona.

I really can't wait to go to Italy but in the meantime spring has arrived here on the farm and the farmer is cultivating the fields.  I have supper on the stove and there's work to be done today....but I'm counting the days I can tell you!
The framed postcards (click to enlarge) are my "mosaics" tonight but I promise you'll be seeing many more before the summer's over.  Mary's Little Red House will be a great place to visit if you have extra time one of these nights.   Consider a virtual visit!

Happy Mother's Day!

It's Mother's Day and like many of you, I'm thinking of my mother.  She was raised by parents who had emigrated from Holland to southern Alberta.  Her father was a farmer and her mother raised seven children.  My mother, the second youngest, took her nurses training in Victoria, BC.  She married my father just a month after receiving her RN and then set off on a series of postings across Canada during the war years.  It must have been exciting to be a young couple off on such an adventure. My father was never posted overseas due to medical issues, so their life as a young married couple might have been far happier than many couples who were separated by circumstances in World War II.  My mother told me often about the night the war ended when she wore out a pair of shoes dancing on the downtown streets of Toronto. 

I have so many memories but one in particular is that Mom loved to swim and summer holidays and our weekends involved trips to the lake or stopping by the rivers we came across as we drove along in the car.  This is a favorite family photo of Mom with "all her children" as she used to say.  Happy Mother's Day to all of you as you remember or celebrate with your mother today!  I'll be linking to Mary's Mosaic Monday today...consider a visit to her Little Red House one of these days.

Will You Be Watching?

Today I'm going to add a few pictures I took while I was "at the Royal Wedding"!

Hope you enjoyed the special day.

Congratulations to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge!

Earlier this week I was thinking about the wedding...

The Royal Wedding Program is now available online.
I am looking forward to watching William and Kate as so many of you will be.   A couple of weeks ago I was going through the window seat in my daughter's room and I came across a book of her paper dolls. 
The book included the Royal Wedding clothes and so I decided to dress Charles and Diana in their finery and pair them with something from my childhood.   I still have a bronzed Coronation Coach pulled by eight tiny white horses, given to me by an aunt. 
When Elizabeth was crowned as Queen Elizabeth II, each child in our school was given an evergreen seedling and I can remember planting it in our backyard. We moved from that house a few years later so I don't know how long the seedling survived but perhaps I'll drive by one of these years to see if I can see it above the roof...
Will you be "at the wedding" ?
Cheers to William and Kate and the best of luck to them both!

Our Church

 

I'd like to introduce you to our family's church.  

St Andrew's Cathedral in Victoria BC is a Heritage site. It's where I sat in the third floor choir loft as a toddler while my father sang in the choir. I still remember the size of the pipe organ.  It's where we attended church for the 21 years I lived in Victoria and it's the church 

that my great grandfather was the original contractor for.

AEneas McDonald (spelled differently in these photos of newspaper articles), had an inheritance from France and with that to back him, was awarded the contract to build St Andrew's.  He brought marble columns from Ottawa, Ontario and they were erected at the sides of the church doors but at some point his partner ran away with the rest of their funds and he lost the contract.
My great grandfather, shown here with his youngest daughter and my father, was a skilled carpenter and worked for many years to help complete the cathedral.  My grandmother remembered climbing up seven flights of stairs into the spire to take her father his lunch. My grandmother's aunt was hired as an organist.

In my mosaic below, the top left and bottom right photos were taken by my grandfather. The others are from the BC Archives which is a fascinating place to look for historical pictures of British Columbia.

St Andrew's is a church filled with memories for my family and we are proud to say that our great grandfather had a hand in building such a wonderful cathedral.


All my pictures  and collages can be enlarged by clicking once.

Hope you're enjoying a wonderful Easter weekend! I'd like to thank Olga for teaching me how to dye eggs in a lovely way.  I had been thinking of using onion skins but was so pleased that Olga shared her method of imprinting parsley leaves on her Easter Eggs.  I used celery leaves and I think it would work well with any small leaf or flower.  I only tried a few eggs so I just used the skins from 4 or 5 purple onions.  I had hard boiled my eggs first so the lighter one was just dipped in the onion water for a minute or so.  The darker eggs were boiled in the onion skin water after I had boiled the skins and let the water cool.  Stop by to see Olga at her Home and Garden Blog to read her full instructions if you have time today.  You'll be glad you did!